Writing Quotes by John Updike

Writing makes you more human.

— John Updike

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east…

— John Updike

I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession.

— John Updike

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

— John Updike

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

— John Updike

My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.

— John Updike

I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.

— John Updike

For whatever crispness and animation my writing has I give some credit to the cartoonist manque.

— John Updike

Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

— John Updike

The creative writer uses his life as well as being its victim; he can control, in his work, the self-presentation that in…

— John Updike

I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid…

— John Updike

So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and…

— John Updike

Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

— John Updike

The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between…

— John Updike

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather…

— John Updike

An aging writer has the not insignificant satisfaction of a shelf of books behind him that, as they wait for their ideal…

— John Updike

The - writing is a kind of act of aggression, and a person who is not aggressive in his normal, may I…

— John Updike

Seemed to me important in writing about people to be able to describe the sexual transactions between them. It's - for many…

— John Updike

Writing fiction is like music. You have to keep it moving. You can have slow movements but there has to be a…

— John Updike

Fiction is very greedy. It will take all you know and then some. The first novel I tried to write, I was…

— John Updike

You write because you don't talk very well, and maybe one of the reasons that I was determined to write was that…

— John Updike

I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for…

— John Updike

I think people do look to writers to tell the truth in a way that nobody else quite will, not politicians or…

— John Updike

Writers take words seriously-perhaps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors…

— John Updike

John Barth, I think, was really a writer of my own age and somewhat of my own temperament, although his books are…

— John Updike

“On being conscious of being a writer: As soon as one is aware of being “somebody,” to be watched and listened to…

— John Updike

“Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we…

— John Updike

I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board…

— John Updike

Most writers begin with accounts of their first home, their family, and the town, often from quite a hostile point of view-love/hate,…

— John Updike

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living…

— John Updike

There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.

— John Updike

Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.

— John Updike

Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself.

— John Updike

Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.

— John Updike

How do you write women so well? I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.

— John Updike

Does fiction, artistic writing, have much of a future? I must say it's on the way out.

— John Updike

“The fiction writer is the ombudsman who argues our humble, dubious case in the halls of eternal record.”

— John Updike

If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself.

— John Updike

I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort.

— John Updike

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

— John Updike